The Reign of Andrew Jackson
By Frederic Austin Ogg
A Chronicle of the Frontier in Politics
Volume 20 of the
Chronicles of America Series
Allen Johnson, Editor
Assistant Editors
Gerhard R. Lomer
Charles W. Jefferys
Textbook Edition
Toronto: Glasgow, Brook & Co.
New York: United States Publishers Association, Inc.
Copyright, 1919
by Yale University Press
Printed in the United States of America
Contents
The Reign of Andrew Jackson
Chapter Chapter Title Page
I. Jackson the Frontiersman 1
II. The Creek War and the Victory of New Orleans 23
III. The "Conquest" of Florida 45
IV. The Death of "King Caucus" 68
V. The Democratic Triumph 95
VI. The "Reign" Begins 113
VII. The Webster-Hayne Debate 137
VIII. Tariff and Nullification 158
IX. The War on the United States Bank 181
X. The Removal of the Southern Indians 201
XI. The Jacksonian Succession 217
Bibliographical Note 237
Index 241
THE REIGN OF ANDREW JACKSON
CHAPTER I
JACKSON THE FRONTIERSMAN
Among the thousands of stout-hearted British subjects who decided to
try their fortune in the Western World after the signing of the Peace
of Paris in 1763 was one Andrew Jackson, a Scotch-Irish Presbyterian of
the tenant class, sprung from a family long resident in or near the
quaint town of Carrickfergus, on the northern coast of Ireland, close
by the newer and more progressive city of Belfast.
With Jackson went his wife and two infant sons, a brother-in-law, and
two neighbors with their families, who thus made up a typical
eighteenth-century emigrant group. Arrived at Charleston, the travelers
fitted themselves out for an overland journey, awaited a stretch of
favorable weather, and set off for the Waxhaw settlement, one hundred
and eighty miles to the northwest, where numbers of their kinsmen and
countrymen were already established. There the Jacksons were received
with open arms by the family of a second brother-in-law, who had
migrated a few years earlier and who now had a comfortable log house
and a good-sized clearing.
The settlement lay on the banks of the upper Catawba, near the junction
of that stream with Waxhaw Creek; and as it occupied a fertile oasis in
a vast waste of pine woods, it was for decades largely cut off from
touch with the outside world. The settlement was situated, too, partly
in North Carolina and partly in South Carolina, so that in the
pre-Revolutionary days many of the inhabitants hardly knew, or cared to
know, in which of the two provinces they dwelt.
Upon their arrival Jackson's friends bought land on the creek and
within the bounds of the settlement. Jackson himself was too poor,
however, to do this, and accordingly took up a claim six miles distant
on another little stream known as Twelve-mile Creek. Here, in the fall
of 1765, he built a small cabin, and during the winter he cleared five
or six acres of ground. The next year he was able to raise enough corn,
vegetables, and pork to keep his little household from want. The tract
thus occupied cannot be positively identified, but it lay in what is
now Union County, North Carolina, a few miles from Monroe, the county
seat.
Then came tragedy of a sort in which frontier history abounds. In the
midst of his efforts to hew out a home and a future for those who were
dear to him the father sickened and died, in March, 1767, at the early
age of twenty-nine, less than two years after his arrival at the
settlement. Tradition says that his death was the result of a rupture
suffered in attempting to move a heavy log, and that it was so sudden
that the distracted wife had no opportunity to seek aid from the
distant neighbors. When at last the news got abroad, sympathy and
assistance were lavished in true frontier fashion. Borne in a rude farm
wagon, the remains were taken to the Waxhaw burying ground and were
interred in a spot which tradition, but tradition only, is able today
to point out.
The widow never returned to the desolated homestead. She and her little
ones were taken into the family of one of her married sisters, where
she spent her few remaining years. On the 15th of March, less than two
weeks after her husband's death, she gave birth to a third son; and the
child was promptly christened Andrew, in memory of the parent he would
never know.
Curiously, the seventh President's birthplace has been a matter of
sharp controversy. There is a tradition that the birth occurred while
the mother was visiting a neighboring family by the name of McKemy; and
Parton, one of Jackson's principal biographers, adduces a good deal of
evidence in support of the story. On the other hand, Jackson always
believed that he was born in the home of the aunt with whom his
bereaved mother took up her residence; and several biographers,
including Bassett, the most recent and the best, accept this
contention. It really matters not at all, save for the circumstance
that if the one view is correct Jackson was born in North Carolina,
while if the other is correct he was born in South Carolina. Both
States have persistently claimed the honor. In the famous proclamation
which he addressed to the South Carolina nullifiers in 1832 Jackson
referred to them as "fellow-citizens of my native state"; in his will
he spoke of himself as a South Carolinian; and in correspondence and
conversation he repeatedly declared that he was born on South Carolina
soil. Jackson was far from infallible, even in matters closely touching
his own career. But the preponderance of evidence on the point lies
decidedly with South Carolina.
No one, at all events, can deny to the Waxhaw settlement an honored
place in American history. There the father of John C. Calhoun first
made his home. There the Revolutionary general, Andrew Pickens, met and
married Rebecca Calhoun. There grew up the eminent North Carolinian
Governor and diplomat, William R. Davie. There William H. Crawford
lived as a boy. And there Jackson dwelt until early manhood.
For the times, young Andrew was well brought up. His mother was a woman
of strong character, who cherished for her last-born the desire that he
should become a Presbyterian clergyman. The uncle with whom he lived
was a serious-minded man who by his industry had won means ample for
the comfortable subsistence of his enlarged household. When he was old
enough, the boy worked for his living, but no harder than the frontier
boys of that day usually worked; and while his advantages were only
such as a backwoods community afforded, they were at least as great as
those of most boys similarly situated, and they were far superior to
those of the youthful Lincoln.
Jackson's earlier years, nevertheless, contained little promise of his
future distinction. He grew up amidst a rough people whose tastes ran
strongly to horse-racing, cockfighting, and heavy drinking, and whose
ideal of excellence found expression in a readiness to fight upon any
and all occasions in defense of what they considered to be their
personal honor. In young Andrew Jackson these characteristics appeared
in a superlative degree. He was mischievous, willful, daring, reckless.
Hardly an escapade took place in the community in which he did not
share; and his sensitiveness and quick temper led him continually into
trouble. In his early teens he swore like a trooper, chewed tobacco
incessantly, acquired a taste for strong drink, and set a pace for
wildness which few of his associates could keep up. He was passionately
fond of running foot races, leaping the bar, jumping, wrestling, and
every sort of sport that partook of the character of mimic battle--and
he never acknowledged defeat. "I could throw him three times out of
four," testifies an old schoolmate, "but he would never stay throwed.
He was dead game even then, and never would give up." Another early
companion says that of all the boys he had known Jackson was the only
bully who was not also a coward.
Of education the boy received only such as was put unavoidably in his
way. It is said that his mother taught him to read before he was five
years old; and he attended several terms in the little low-roofed log
schoolhouse in the Waxhaw settlement. But his formal instruction never
took him beyond the fundamentals of reading, writing, geography,
grammar, and "casting accounts." He was neither studious nor teachable.
As a boy he preferred sport to study, and as a man he chose to rely on
his own fertile ideas rather than to accept guidance from others. He
never learned to write the English language correctly, although he
often wrote it eloquently and convincingly. In an age of bad spellers
he achieved distinction from the number of ways in which he could spell
a word within the space of a single page. He could use no foreign
languages; and of the great body of science, literature, history, and
the arts he knew next to nothing. He never acquired a taste for books,
although vanity prompted him to treasure throughout his public career
all correspondence and other documentary materials that might be of use
to future biographers. Indeed, he picked as a biographer first his
military aide, John Reid, and later his close friend, John H. Eaton,
whom he had the satisfaction in 1829 of appointing Secretary of War.
When the Revolution came, young Andrew was a boy of ten. For a time the
Carolina backwoods did not greatly feel the effect of the change. But
in the spring of 1780 all of the revolutionary troops in South Carolina
were captured at Charleston, and the lands from the sea to the
mountains were left at the mercy of Tarleton's and Rawdon's bands of
redcoats and their Tory supporters. Twice the Waxhaw settlement was
ravaged before the patriots could make a stand. Young Jackson witnessed
two battles in 1780, without taking part in them, and in the following
year he, a brother, and a cousin were taken prisoners in a skirmish. To
the day of his death Jackson bore on his head and hand the marks of a
saber blow administered by a British lieutenant whose jack boots he
refused to polish. When an exchange of prisoners was made, Mrs. Jackson
secured the release of her two boys, but not until after they had
contracted smallpox in Camden jail. The older one died, but the
younger, though reduced to a skeleton, survived. Already the third
brother had given up his life in battle; and the crowning disaster came
when the mother, going as a volunteer to nurse the wounded Waxhaw
prisoners on the British vessels in Charleston harbor, fell ill of
yellow fever and perished. Small wonder that Andrew Jackson always
hated the British uniform, or that when he sat in the executive chair
an anti-British feeling colored all of his dealings with foreign
nations!
At the age of fourteen, the sandy-haired, pockmarked lad of the Waxhaws
found himself alone in the world. The death of his relatives had made
him heir to a portion of his grandfather's estate in Carrickfergus; but
the property was tied up in the hands of an administrator, and the boy
was in effect both penniless and homeless. The memory of his mother and
her teachings was, as he was subsequently accustomed to say, the only
capital with which he started life. To a natural waywardness and
quarrelsomeness had been added a heritage of bitter memories, and the
outlook was not bright.
Upon one thing the youth was determined: he would no longer be a charge
upon his uncle or upon any one else. What to turn to, however, was not
so easy to decide. First he tried the saddler's trade, but that was too
monotonous. Then he undertook school-teaching; that proved little
better. Desirous of a glimpse of the world, he went to Charleston in
the autumn of 1782. There he made the acquaintance of some people of
wealth and fell into habits of life which were beyond his means. At the
race track he bet and swaggered himself into notice; and when he ran
into debt he was lucky enough to free himself by winning a large wager.
But the proceeds of his little inheritance, which had in the meantime
become available, were now entirely used up; and when in the spring the
young spendthrift went back to the Waxhaws, he had only a fine horse
with elegant equipment, a costly pair of pistols, a gold watch, and a
fair wardrobe--in addition to some familiarity with the usages of
fashion--to show for his spent "fortune."
One other thing which Jackson may have carried back with him from
Charleston was an ambition to become a lawyer. At all events, in the
fall of 1784 he entered the law office of a certain Spruce Macay in the
town of Salisbury, North Carolina; and, after three years of
intermittent study, he was admitted to practice in the courts of the
State. The instruction which he had received was not of a high order,
and all accounts agree that the young man took his tasks lightly and
that he learned but little law. That he fully sustained the reputation
which he had gained in the Waxhaws is indicated by testimony of one of
Macay's fellow townsmen, after Jackson had become famous, to the effect
that the former student had been "the most roaring, rollicking,
game-cocking, card-playing, mischievous fellow that ever lived in
Salisbury."
Upon his admission to the bar the irresponsible young blade hung out
his shingle in Martinsville, Guilford County, North Carolina, and sat
down to wait for clients. He was still less than twenty years old,
without influence, and with only such friends as his irascible
disposition permitted him to make and hold. Naturally business came
slowly, and it became necessary to eke out a living by serving as a
local constable and also by assisting in a mercantile enterprise
carried on by two acquaintances in the town. After a year this
hand-to-mouth existence began to pall. Neither then nor in later life
did Jackson have any real taste or aptitude for law. He was not of a
legal turn of mind, and he was wholly unprepared to suffer the
sacrifices and disappointments which a man of different disposition
would have been willing to undergo in order to win for himself an
established position in his profession. Chagrin in this restless young
man was fast yielding to despair when an alluring field of action
opened for him in the fast-developing country beyond the mountains.
The settlement of white men in that part of North Carolina which lay
west of the Alleghanies had begun a year or two after Jackson's birth.
At first the hardy pioneers found lodgment on the Watauga, Holston,
Nolichucky, and other streams to the east of modern Knoxville. But in
1779 a colony was planted by James Robertson and John Donelson on the
banks of the Cumberland, two hundred miles farther west, and in a brief
time the remoter settlement, known as Nashville, became a Mecca for
homeseeking Carolinians and Virginians. The intervening hill and forest
country abounded in hostile Indians. The settler or trader who
undertook to traverse this region took his life in his hands, and the
settlements themselves were subject to perennial attack.
In 1788, after the collapse of an attempt of the people of the "Western
District" to set up an independent State by the name of Franklin, the
North Carolina Assembly erected the three counties included in the
Cumberland settlement into a superior court district; and the person
selected for judge was a close friend of Jackson, John McNairy, who
also had been a law pupil of Spruce Macay in Salisbury. McNairy had
been in the Tennessee region two years, but at the time of receiving
his judicial appointment he was visiting friends in the Carolinas. His
description of the opportunities awaiting ambitious young men in the
back country influenced a half-dozen acquaintances, lawyers and others,
to make the return trip with him; and among the number was Jackson.
Some went to assume posts which were at McNairy's disposal, but Jackson
went only to see the country.
Assembling at Morganton, on the east side of the mountains, in the fall
of 1788, the party proceeded leisurely to Jonesboro, which, although as
yet only a village of fifty or sixty log houses, was the metropolis of
the eastern Tennessee settlements. There the party was obliged to wait
for a sufficient band of immigrants to assemble before they could be
led by an armed guard with some degree of safety through the dangerous
middle country. As a highway had just been opened between Jonesboro and
Nashville, the travelers were able to cover the distance in fifteen
days. Jackson rode a fine stallion, while a pack mare carried his
worldly effects, consisting of spare clothes, blankets, half a dozen
law books, and small quantities of ammunition, tea, tobacco, liquor,
and salt. For defense he bore a rifle and three pistols; and in his
pocket he carried one hundred and eighty dollars of the much valued
hard money. On the second day of November the emigrant train made its
appearance in Nashville bringing news of much interest--in particular,
that the Federal Constitution had been ratified by the ninth State, and
that the various legislatures were preparing to choose electors, who
would undoubtedly make George Washington the first President of the
Republic.
Less than ten years old, Nashville had now a population of not over two
hundred. But it was the center of a somewhat settled district extending
up and down the Cumberland for a distance of eighty or ninety miles,
and the young visitor from the Waxhaws quickly found it a promising
field for his talents. There was only one lawyer in the place, and
creditors who had been outbid for his services by their debtors were
glad to put their cases in the hands of the newcomer. It is said that
before Jackson had been in the settlement a month he had issued more
than seventy writs to delinquent debtors. When, in 1789, he was
appointed "solicitor," or prosecutor, in Judge McNairy's jurisdiction
with a salary of forty pounds for each court he attended, his fortune
seemed made and he forthwith gave up all thought of returning to his
Carolina home. Instead he took lodgings under the roof of the widow of
John Donelson, and in 1791 he married a daughter of that doughty
frontiersman. Land was still cheap, and with the proceeds of his fees
and salary he purchased a large plantation called Hunter's Hill,
thirteen miles from Nashville, and there he planned to establish a home
which would take rank as one of the finest in the western country.
The work of a frontier solicitor was diverse and arduous. A turbulent
society needed to be kept in order and the business obligations of a
shifty and quarrelsome people to be enforced. No great knowledge of law
was required, but personal fearlessness, vigor, and incorruptibility
were indispensable. Jackson was just the man for the business. His
physical courage was equaled by his moral strength; he was passionately
devoted to justice; he was diligent and conscientious; and, as one
writer has remarked, bad grammar, incorrect pronunciation, and violent
denunciation did not shock the judges of that day or divert the mind of
juries from the truth. Traveling almost constantly over the wretched
roads and through the dark forests, dodging Indians, swimming his horse
across torrential streams, sleeping alone in the woods with hand on
rifle, threatened by desperate wrongdoers, Andrew Jackson became the
best-known figure in all western Tennessee and won at this time a great
measure of that public confidence which later became his chief
political asset.
Meanwhile the rapid growth of population south of the Ohio River made
necessary new arrangements for purposes of government. In 1790 the
region between the Ohio and the present States of Alabama and
Mississippi, having been turned over to the Nation by its earlier
possessors, was erected into the "Southwest Territory," and in 1791 the
northern half became the State of Kentucky. In 1793 the remainder of
the Territory set up a Legislature, and three years later delegates
from the eleven counties met at Knoxville to draw up a new frame of
government with a view to admission to statehood. Jackson was a member
of this convention, and tradition has it that it was he who brought
about the selection of the name Tennessee, an Indian term meaning "The
Great Crooked River," as against Franklin, Washington, and other
proposed designations for the new State. At all events, upon the
admission of the State in 1796, he was chosen as its sole
representative in the lower branch of Congress.
In the late autumn of that year the young lawmaker set out for the
national capital at Philadelphia, and there he arrived, after a journey
of almost eight hundred miles on horseback, just as the triumphs of the
Democrats in the recent presidential election were being duly
celebrated. He had not been chosen as a party man, but it is altogether
probable that his own sympathies and those of most of his constituents
lay with the Jeffersonians; and his appearance on the floor of Congress
was an omen of the fast-rising tide of western democracy which should
never find its ultimate goal until this rough but honest Tennesseean
should himself be borne into the presidential chair.
Jackson's career in Congress was brief and uneventful. After a year of
service in the House of Representatives he was appointed to fill the
unexpired term of William Blount in the Senate. But this post he
resigned in 1798 in order to devote his energies to his private
affairs. While at Philadelphia he made the acquaintance not only of
John Adams, Jefferson, Randolph, Gallatin, and Burr, but of his future
Secretary of State, Edward Livingston, and of some other persons who
were destined to be closely connected with his later career. But
Jackson was not fitted for a legislative body either by training or by
temperament. He is recorded as speaking in the House only twice and in
the Senate not at all, and he seems to have made no considerable
impression upon his colleagues. Gallatin later described him as "a
tall, lank, uncouth-looking personage, with long locks of hair hanging
over his face, and a queue down his back tied in an eel-skin; his dress
singular, his manners and deportment those of a rough backwoodsman."
And Jefferson is represented as saying of Jackson to Webster at
Monticello in 1824: "His passions are terrible. When I was president of
the Senate he was Senator, and he could never speak on account of the
rashness of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as
often choke with rage."
Return to Tennessee meant, however, only a transfer from one branch of
the public service to another, for the ex-Senator was promptly
appointed to a judgeship of the state supreme court at a salary of six
hundred dollars a year. The position he found not uncongenial and he
retained it for six years. Now, as earlier, Jackson's ignorance of law
was somewhat compensated by his common sense, courage, and
impartiality; and while only one of his decisions of this period is
extant, Parton reports that the tradition of fifty years ago
represented them as short, untechnical, unlearned, sometimes
ungrammatical, but generally right. The daily life of Jackson as a
frontier judge was hardly less active and exciting than it had been
when he was a prosecuting attorney. There were long and arduous
horseback journeys "on circuit"; ill-tempered persons often threatened,
and sometimes attempted, to deal roughly with the author of an
unfavorable decision; occasionally it was necessary to lay aside his
dignity long enough to lend a hand in capturing or controlling a
desperate character. For example, on arriving once in a settlement
Jackson found that a powerful blacksmith had committed a crime and that
the sheriff dared not arrest him. "Summon me," said the judge;
whereupon he walked down from the bench, found the culprit, led him
into court, and sentenced him.
In 1804 Jackson resigned his judgeship in order to give exclusive
attention again to his private affairs. He had fallen badly into debt,
and his creditors were pressing him hard. One expedient after another
failed, and finally Hunter's Hill had to be given up. He saved enough
from the wreck, however, to purchase a small plantation eight miles
from Nashville; and there, after several years of financial
rehabilitation, he erected the handsome brick house which the country
came subsequently to know as "The Hermitage." In partnership with two
of his wife's relatives, Jackson had opened a store in which, even
while still a member of the highest tribunal of the State, he not
infrequently passed tea and salt and calico over the counter to his
neighbors. In small trading, however, he was not adept, and the store
failed. Nevertheless, from 1804 until 1813 he successfully combined
with planting and the stock-raising business enterprises of a larger
sort, especially slave and horse dealing. His debts paid off, he now
became one of the most prosperous, as he already was one of the most
influential, men of the Cumberland country.
But it was not given to Andrew Jackson to be a mere money-maker or to
dwell in quietness. In 1804 he was denied the governorship of the New
Orleans Territory because he was described to Jefferson as "a man of
violent passions, arbitrary in his disposition, and frequently engaged
in broils and disputes." During the next decade he fully lived up to
this description. He quarreled with Governor John Sevier, and only the
intervention of friends prevented the two from doing each other
violence. He broke off friendly relations with his old patron, Judge
McNairy. In a duel he killed Charles Dickinson, who had spoken
disparagingly of Mrs. Jackson, and he himself suffered a wound which
weakened him for life. He publicly caned one Thomas Swann. In a
rough-and-tumble encounter with Thomas Hart Benton and the latter's
brother Jesse he was shot in the shoulder and one of his antagonists
was stabbed. This list of quarrels, threats, fights, and other violent
outbursts could be extended to an amazing length. "Yes, I had a fight
with Jackson," Senator Benton admitted late in life; "a fellow was
hardly in the fashion then who hadn't."
At the age of forty-five Jackson had not yet found himself. He was
known in his own State as "a successful planter, a breeder and racer of
horses, a swearer of mighty oaths, a faithful and generous man to his
friends, a chivalrous man to women, a hospitable man at his home, a
desperate and relentless man in personal conflicts, a man who always
did the things he set himself to do." But he had achieved no
nation-wide distinction; he had not wrought out a career; he had made
almost as many enemies as friends, he had cut himself off from official
connections; he had no desire to return to the legal profession; and he
was so dissatisfied with his lot and outlook that he seriously
considered moving to Mississippi in order to make a fresh start.
One thread, however, still bound him to the public service. From 1802
he had been major general of militia in the eleven counties of western
Tennessee; and notwithstanding the fact that three calls from the
Government during a decade had yielded no real opportunity for action,
he clung both to the office and to the hope for a chance to lead his
"hardy sons of the West" against a foe worthy of their efforts. This
chance came sooner than people expected, and it led in precisely the
direction that Jackson would have chosen--toward the turbulent,
misgoverned Spanish dependency of Florida.